Top strange facts learned in Miami

Chris, hatless in red shirt, slogs with journalists through the Everglades

Low water flows—from Everglades National Park interpretor Alan Scott:

Water flow in the Everglades is only one-sixth what it used to be 100 years ago.

Development has halted water flow south of the gigantic Lake Okeechobee, which is supposed to feed the Everglades by seeping 100 miles south over three months. Today, highways, agriculture, and houses have resulted in a pipe system near the lake that shoots huge amounts of water out to the sea, instead of seeping south. Because so much water is dumped to the sea up north, by January the Everglades “river of grass” will dry up so much that it crunches beneath your feet.

The Burmese python is the “poster snake” for the problem of released non-native species. People tired of their fast-growing pet pythons started dumping them in the Everglades many years ago. The first found in the national park showed up in the mid-1990s. Soon after, scientists realized they were breeding and migrating west, as far as the Florida Keys.

Found in the stomachs of dead pythons found in the Everglades: hooves of a fawn; the bill of a Great Blue heron.

Activists—from Jonathan Ullman, activist with the Sierra Club in Florida:

Two big activists who helped establish Everglades National Park both moved to Florida from other states. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, author of River of Grass, came from Massachusetts via Minnesota after her early divorce. Her father was publisher of the Miami Herald. Ernest Coe arrived in the subtropics at the age of 60 after many years designing landscapes in Connecticut. Both fell under the spell of the Everglades and devoted their lives to preserving it.